Nick Hakim

Influences

• Shuggie Otis — Hakim has cited Otis's home-recorded masterpiece Inspiration Information as a direct blueprint for his own DIY production style. You hear this in the drum machine patterns and the lazy, warm keyboard chords on Green Twins. Both artists share that same obsession with solitary bedroom studio tracking.
• Robert Wyatt — Hakim has kept Wyatt's solo catalog in heavy rotation during interviews, pointing to the former Soft Machine drummer's melancholic, vulnerable vocal delivery. You can hear Wyatt's eccentric phrasing and sparse, off-kilter arrangements all over the balladry on Will This Make Me Good. It is the art of making a slow song sound incredibly unsettling.
• Marvin Gaye — The late-period, heavily layered vocal arrangements on Gaye's Vulnerable album are a major touchstone for Hakim's approach to backing vocals. You hear it in the way Hakim stacks his own voice in dense, close-harmony choral arrangements that sound like they are floating above the instrumentation. It is soul music built on layers of internal dialogue.
• RZA — Hakim has pointed to the gritty, unpolished sampling aesthetic of the early Wu-Tang Clan records as a major influence on his drum production. Instead of clean rhythm tracks, Hakim deliberately degrades his drum samples to mimic that dusty, mid-90s SP-1200 crunch. It gives his indie-soul tracks a heavy, hip-hop-adjacent backbone.
• Al Green — The intimate, dry vocal tracking Willie Mitchell engineered for Green at Royal Studios in Memphis is a direct ancestor to Hakim's close-mic technique. You hear it on the Where Will We Go EPs, where Hakim sings right on the edge of the capsule, capturing every breath. It creates an intense, almost uncomfortable level of physical proximity.